Jerry Seib: Democrats Triple Down on Wage Equality

4/11/2014 6:00AM

Ahead of a competitive midterm election, democrats are pushing three fronts of an equality message based on income fairness: minimum wage increase, unemployment benefits, and equal pay for women. However, Republicans continue to oppose such legislation saying it kills jobs.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

the ... Washington this week suggests that the bigger political economic debate of twenty fourteen a midterm election years going to be between ... Democrats pushing income equality on the one hand and Republicans talking about job creation on the other why do I say this well if you look at that action this week both in the White House announced on Capitol Hill in Congress ... I is mostly been about Democratic efforts to push legislation ... on three big issues minimum wage increase extending unemployment benefits for those who've been ... unemployed for a long while ... and pay equity for women ... these are issues that Democrats believe ... resonate with their base and in many cases to play with women voters were crucial to Democrats ... that might seem to be a winning hand for Democrats in a problem for Republicans to oppose all of those things ... we just Republicans do you think you pay a price for opposing Democratic legislation these issues then a very simple response it is this ... we think that Americans think job creation is the more important issue ... and that while increasing the minimum wage where pushing pay equity might be nice ... if you tell voters those given the way of job creation wheezing gets more persuasive argument ... center Rob Portman of Ohio visited us this week and said exactly that if you tell people raising the minimum wage to ten dollars and ten cents an hour ... as Democrats propose will cost jobs in my state of Ohio ... that changes the conversation ... so this is the big economic debates is likely to be carried into the fall because odds are very good ... this is not any action on the rhetoric on those big issues ...